Shusterman imagines that a part of the underclass really become an underclass - living in deep tunnels underneath the subways of New York. To preserveShusterman imagines that a part of the underclass really become an underclass - living in deep tunnels underneath the subways of New York. To preserve themselves, the Downsiders minimize their contact with Topsiders. Of course, this delicate situation threatens to blow up when the main character gets too curious about life above, and falls for a Topside girl.

While good, this lacked both the depth of character and the cleverness of either his Skinjacker or Unwind books. In general, this felt like an early work. It almost completely lacks a sense of danger, even when the main character is tried, sentenced to death, and executed. Similarly, I thought the treatment of the main girl and her family was thin and too stereotyped. It's a decent book, but not anywhere as good as some of the other things I've read of his....more

This was a satisfying finish to a very good series. I didn't like the series quite as much as Everlost, but I still thought it was several cuts aboveThis was a satisfying finish to a very good series. I didn't like the series quite as much as Everlost, but I still thought it was several cuts above typical YA fare. In another market setting, these books would just be books, and not relegated to the "YA" shelves. But, I guess teens read more than adults these days, so it makes excellent sense to market them in this way.

In this book, I didn't like the two main characters (Conner and Risa) that much. Conner didn't actually do much of anything here, and Risa, unfortunately, became something of the stand-by-your-man girlfriend. On the other hand, other characters became even more interesting in this book, most notably Argent. I very much liked his twisted redemption. And then there is Lev, who stands with Mary Hightower (from Everlost) as Shusterman's best creations. Lev is complicated, torn, and just a wonderful character. His development over the course of the series has made the whole thing more than worthwhile.

Spoilers ahead. Lev starts as a willing tithe, a kid who has been born to be unwound, a living donation. He transforms into a clapper, a suicide bomber whose explosives are literally carried in the blood. And then becomes the clapper who didn't clap. From there, he develops a kind of saviour complex. And in this book, he reverts back to his roots - becoming both a tithe and a clapper. Without the explosives in his blood, he offers himself up as a sacrifice by clapping in public, and getting shot down for his efforts. I loved this ending for his character. I thought it was fitting, and both noble and tragic.

And then, Shusterman had to undercut his own ending, by having Lev live. And he did the same with Conner, who gets unwound and then rewound. At first I was annoyed with Shusterman. I know that YA books have been very hesitant to show real sacrifices. We must have happy endings, and as a result, Harry Potter becomes noble because he tries to sacrifice himself, but doesn't actually have to pay the price of the sacrifice. I thought Shusterman was caving into the same pressure.

But then, there was the wedding at the end, and I completely changed my mind. The wedding was sort of bizarre, between Una and the divided aspects of her love, Will. The traditional ending for a comedy is a wedding, or a bunch of weddings. Earlier in the book, Shusterman made several allusions to Shakespeare: "winter of our discontent" - "sound and fury, signifying nothing". It's hard for me to believe that he was unaware that the wedding signaled that these books are ultimately a comedy in structure. They end with restoration, with mending, both figuratively and literally. Thus, I came to think of the healing of Conner and Lev as being a brilliant tip of the hat to this essentially comedic structure. So my annoyance turned to admiration. And, if there is a quote from Shakespeare that captures the mending spirt that the book captures, perhaps it's Puck's farewell:

If we shadows have offended,Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumber'd hereWhile these visions did appear.And this weak and idle theme,No more yielding but a dream,Gentles, do not reprehend:if you pardon, we will mend:And, as I am an honest Puck,If we have unearned luckNow to 'scape the serpent's tongue,We will make amends ere long;Else the Puck a liar call;So, good night unto you all.Give me your hands, if we be friends,And Robin shall restore amends....more

Donovan Curtis' only gift is his unerring knack for getting himself in trouble. The gift somehow goes haywire, and instead of in trouble, he finds himDonovan Curtis' only gift is his unerring knack for getting himself in trouble. The gift somehow goes haywire, and instead of in trouble, he finds himself going to a special school for gifted kids. Hilarity ensues (or it would have if this were a better book).

The writing here is fine. The story is fairly tight. Everything works very much as it should. But there is an underlying irony. In a book where the message is that each person has his own gift, Korman resorts unabashedly to stereotyping just about every character in the book. Thus, the nerdy geeky gifted kids are both nerdy and geeky. The normal troublemakers also act pretty much exactly according to Hollywood scripting. Each of these characters could comfortably inhabit the outskirts of a typical John Hughes movie from the Eighties, and they end up having as much of a distinct personality as Tin Man Squarepants, the robot the geeks are building.

There wasn't much to dislike about the book. Nor was there much of anything to admire. In a few weeks, I imagine that I will pretty much have completely forgotten it, with no harm done. But I did vaguely enjoy reading it in the moment. So, overall, I thought it was OK....more

Sanderson plays with Harry Potter, and does it quite well. There's a boy at a school for magic. There's a mystery at the school as kids start to disapSanderson plays with Harry Potter, and does it quite well. There's a boy at a school for magic. There's a mystery at the school as kids start to disappear. The boy gets involved in solving the mystery, and in saving the world. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

The magic here is unlike that in Harry Potter. Instead of waving a wand and saying something vaguely latin sounding, the Rithmatic students spend much of their time mastering arcane geometry and drawing techniques. Rithmatics is a way of fighting with chalk figures, and it would be pretty pointless, except that the world has become infested with wild chalkings who have the nasty habit of eating the human flesh that they encounter, and these chalkings can only be fought with magical chalking, or with acid baths. Only a very few people have Rithmatic talent, and the talent needs quite a bit of development, since it is an intricate magical system that veers closely to a kind of alternate science.

Our hero, unlike Harry, is sixteen when it starts. He has a mother. There is no prophecy about him. He's basically ignored by everyone, and he does badly at his school. His bad performance derives from two facts: he is not a rithmatist, and he is obsessed with rithmatics. Thus, the only thing that interests him is something that everyone says is none of his business. As it turns out, he is extraordinarily gifted in everything that has to do with the knowledge aspects of rithmatics, but he has no gift for actually bringing chalk figures to life. So, everyone thinks, his knowledge is basically pointless.

The basic premise is very good, and even better, Sanderson puts this in an alternate world which is cool in its own right. At some point, this Earth veered from ours, but its not clear exactly when or how. The United States is not a continent here. Rather, it is sixty islands, each with its own government, and only unified in some very sketchy fashion. The center of disturbance in this world is on the island of Nebrask, and that's where rithmatists go to fight wild chalkings when they have gotten adequate training.

On top of this, the world is steampunk/gearpunk. Machines are driven by complicated spring/gear systems, including spring run trains and guns. The inventor of these systems was the saint Da Vinci. I don't know if Sanderson picked Da Vinci because his name was recognizable, or if there are specific drawings of Da Vinci's that he had in mind. There is also some mysterious relationship between gears and rithmatics, but its only touched upon here.

The plot was engaging for a YA mystery, and the writing was good for Sanderson. I didn't have any of the problems with the writing style that had cropped up for me in Words of Radiance. In particular, I did not notice any egregious use of adverbs here. My suspicion is that there was more care taken with the editing here. Also, the book had a good deal of charm, and the characters had a bit more depth than I generally expect from a YA book, especially the adult characters. And, there were some genuine surprises here. I won't go into them, but a few things developed in ways that veered nicely from what tends to be required in this kind of YA book.

So, a fun world, with interesting and likable characters, and some unexpected twists, all charmingly told. I will definitely pick up the next installment in this series if Sanderson gets around to writing it. I think he's juggling somewhere around six series at once right now, and I have no idea how he does it. People think I'm odd for reading 4 or 5 books at a time, and he writes more than that, all at once....more

The largest portion of this book is a short story written from John Gregory's point of view, detailing his first encounter with witches and boggarts sThe largest portion of this book is a short story written from John Gregory's point of view, detailing his first encounter with witches and boggarts several years before he became a spook's apprentice. It was a decent story, but contained nothing that I found surprising or revelatory. The writing style was solid and comfortable, and it was good to be back in Delaney's misbegotten county.

The second story I enjoyed a bit more, largely because I love Alice's manner of speech. It tells of the time when Mab and the Mouldheels captured and tortured Alice to get information so they could then capture Tom Ward. It's an episode that was left more or less to the imagination in Attack of the Fiend. I haven't yet read up to I Am Alice, but I enjoy her voice so much that I may raise these books on my list of priorities. (I haven't found the later books in any used bookstore, nor do they show up at our local Barnes & Noble. I would rather not get them on Kindle, but I've been reluctant to order them online. So I have come to more or less of a halt with this series.)

After the second story the book takes a radical turn downhill. When it was published, the Grimalkin tale was probably pretty exciting and it featured a new voice. Unfortunately, the same material in this tale is covered in I Am Grimalkin. And it may even be lifted word for word. That redundancy, for me, severely cheapened what was already a slim volume. And then, there is a "gallery of villains" which consists of nothing but very short excerpts from the books that had already seen publication. So the entire last third of the book was basically a waste....more

I'm torn about how I feel about this book. For what it aspires to be, its quite good. But I wanted more from it. The story is decently told and movesI'm torn about how I feel about this book. For what it aspires to be, its quite good. But I wanted more from it. The story is decently told and moves along nicely. The characters are stock, but there's enough depth there to tug on the heartstrings at a couple of points. For basic background, this is the story of a high school track star who loses her right leg in a bus accident.

There are several aspects of the book that are quite good. First, there is a strong and clear sense of what its like to be a runner: the challenge, the pain, and the potential for euphoria. It's quite clear that both the narrator and the author love and understand running. Second, the main character and her friends feel genuine to me. They are stock characters, but while they are thin, they don't feel false. And through the course of the book, I actually came to have a kind of affection for the narrator.

Also, the book is written in what feels like a distinctive voice. At first, I was dismayed because the narration is in the first person present. This always bothers me, but here it was less bothersome than usual. I have a hard time understanding why this fad has become so pervasive. It's supposed to make things more genuine, but for me it always feels more artificial. Anyway, I quickly got over it, and then got taken in by the rhythm of the narration. The sentences tend to be short and staccato.

And there tends to be one sentence per paragraph.

Sometimes just a phrase.

Maybe less.

For a while I thought this was a deliberate choice by the author. And then, a high school newspaper story appeared in the book. And guess what? It's author wrote in exactly the same style. I was a little disappointed.

Then, there is the question of the lack of depth of almost all the auxiliary characters. The mother worries. The father remains distant and silently toils. The best friend shows support and concern. Every character is pretty much one dimensional. Then it occurred to me that perhaps they were one dimensional because that's as deep as the narrator was capable of looking into them. There are some hints that there's more to these people than the narrator appreciates. So I started looking for more suggestions of unreliability in the narrator, and maybe they were there, or maybe I was simply projecting, trying to make the book better than it actually is. I'm still not sure about this, but either the narrator is fairly dense and totally self-absorbed, but still basically a nice girl, or the book and its characters lack any depth at all.

My other problem is with the story structure. It seems like recovering from a leg amputation would present lots of obstacles. But, other than getting over her initial bad attitude, the narrator doesn't struggle much at all. There are basically no set-backs in the book. And, since everything comes so easy for her, it ends up that the narrator and hero is largely passive. For the most part, she doesn't do much of anything, and other people tend to do stuff for her. This kind of passivity feels realistic, but it also tends to be dull.

There was a really good scene toward the beginning of the book where she has to figure out how to get up the stairs and into a shower/bathtub on her own. This presented a goal, positive action on her part, some legitimate obstacles to that action, and the use of ingenuity to overcome the obstacles. Unfortunately, for the rest of the book, people mostly decided to do something and then did it, and little or nothing ever stood in their way. For example, she is warned at one point to be careful about overusing her new leg, because hot spots can cause a serious set back. So, she never overuses her leg and doesn't have to deal with hot spots. That's sensible, but doesn't make for very interesting or dramatic writing.

On the other hand, once the story is over, and we get to the third act, the writer spins the book in a slightly new direction and things pick up very nicely. This act involves the narrator trying to do something special for a new friend, a girl with cerebral palsy who had helped her catch up in math. The ending is warm and touching. It was a little heavy handed in the message/moral department, but I guess that's standard for these "uplifting" YA books that win book awards. Even though the manipulation here was more than obvious, I found myself liking it.

Most of my issues with this book stem from it almost being really good. I'm happy that I read it, and it was a fairly charming and easy read....more

There are a couple of ironies in the title of this book. Towards the end of the book, Malala insists that she does not want to be known as the "girl wThere are a couple of ironies in the title of this book. Towards the end of the book, Malala insists that she does not want to be known as the "girl who was shot by the Taliban." And yet, that's what the title says. If it had simply said "I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education," I doubt whether it would have gotten anywhere near the attention it has. Also, the title insists "I am Malala." But it's co-written with Christina Lamb, and for large stretches of the book, especially in the first half, Malala's voice all but disappears.

I think I would likely have been more impressed with this book if Malala had finished her education and then written it herself, in her own voice. But if she had done that, I also think its likely that all interest in her would have died down, and I would never have heard about her or her book. As it is, this book strikes me as being strongly influenced by three players, who each have slightly divergent interests.

First, there is the publisher. They paid Malala a $3 million dollar advance to right her story, and they had the interest to get her account out as quickly as possible, while she is still the focus of a fair amount of publicity and interest. The rush to publish did serve to get the story out there, but I think it also diluted the quality of the telling.

Second, there is Lamb. I suspect that much of the history and background of Pakistan comes from Lamb herself. It's hard to tell how much of the accounts of more current events come from Lamb or Malala, and especially hard to tell how much influence Lamb had on some of the political opinions in the book.

Finally, there is Malala. It's pretty clear that Malala feels very strongly about her causes. The book is best when she is describing what life was like growing up in the Swat valley, and gets even better when she describes the takeover by the Taliban and her family's displacement from their home as the army tries to rid the valley of the Taliban. It's clear to me that Malala is a tremendously courageous girl, and she has something to say. I just wish that she had taken her time, and told her story in her own voice. That's part of the purpose of getting the education that she strongly claims is her right.

I do find myself wondering who this book was written for. At some points it feels like its for an American audience. Malala early on mentions a fondness for Justin Bieber and the Twilight Series. Later she talks about Barack Obama as being one of her favorite politicians, and Angelina Jolie as her favorite actress/activist. These are surprisingly American tastes for a Pashtun. To be fair, she also mentions a love for Master Chef, and I assume she means the U.K. and not the U.S. version.

Anyway, the way the book is written, its clear that she is not writing for her countrymen in the Swat valley. I also don't think the point of the book is to try to persuade members of the Taliban to change their ways. If anything, I would think that this book would drive the Taliban to try further attempts on her life. It's not like they have the best ear for general public relations.

So, if its for an American/Western audience, then I wonder what is the point. It's possible that Malala is trying to show us that there are more kinds of Muslims than the Taliban, and that there are some Muslim voices that are trying to stand against the Taliban. It actually does this quite well, though it also tragically shows how ineffective these voices tend to be, at least within the Swat valley. And of course, the message is that no-one should be deprived the right to education.

On the last point, I have two problems. First, does anyone in the intended audience need persuading? It's kind of like publishing a book that says torturing puppies is bad. Imagine this: "I am Mankiller: the Dog who Stood up for Peace and was Drowned by Michael Vick" The message strikes me as way too easy.

But I might also object that, by their own lights, even the Taliban is not against educating women. They merely differ in the curriculum that should be taught. While Malala wants girls to learn Math and Science practicals and such, the Taliban would like girls in their Madrasas to learn more practical things, like how to blow yourself up for the glory of Islam. Or to put it differently, if a fundamentalist Christian wants to teach Genesis in elementary school, and ban all teaching of evolution, are they thereby trying to deny kids an education? I think the answer is yes, but lots of people disagree. The Taliban's notion of a woman's education, as far as I can see, differs from the holy-roller's only in degree.

Finally, I predict that this book will become a staple in schools across the country. When I was growing up, we constantly heard that we should eat everything on our plate because there were people starving in Biafra. This book will teach kids that they should treasure their education because there are kids elsewhere who are being denied theirs, and Malala was willing to die for her right to be educated. My guess is that that is a message that no educator will be able to resist.

I liked the idea of this book: a YA novel focusing on a young knight who accompanies Richard the Lionhearted on the Third Crusade. And it wasn't badlyI liked the idea of this book: a YA novel focusing on a young knight who accompanies Richard the Lionhearted on the Third Crusade. And it wasn't badly done, but wasn't very good either. The characters, with one exception, are flat and exactly what you would expect. The story lacks any drama, and feels more like Grant is ticking off boxes in the considerable historical research she has done. And uniting it all is the disturbing notion that one particular horse is more worthwhile than any of the people that we are following. (view spoiler)[At one point, the younger knight compares the temporary disappearance of his horse to his brother's loss of his right arm. Even in 1100, I will give you a choice, cut off your arm or lose your horse. For the younger brother, the more noble of the two, it appears that this is basically a toss-up. (hide spoiler)]

I had some trouble with a couple of historical details. There's a reference to the plumbing in the castle in England. To be fair, Grant does say that her research showed the existence of some plumbing in great houses at the time. Even so, it was very rare, and would be worth some extra comment. It seems to me that it would be an oddity that the characters would appreciate - something that sets them apart. There's also the question of literacy. It's fine to have the nearby monks be literate, but the Granvilles also have a servant named "Old Nurse" who tries to teach the boys to read and write. The chances of some wet nurse in 1100 being able to read and write were practically zero.

Later, the younger son gets really mad that the older boy has "read" a letter for him. Again, I don't buy it. Neither of them could read, and the author of the letter is aware of that. Thus, the writer would know that someone else would have to read the letter, and would avoid touching on stuff that was confidential or embarrassing. And the recipient would also know that the letter would have to be read by others, and thus would not get offended if someone else read it. The anger at reading a private letter assumes a whole system of familiarity with reading and writing letters that is way more modern than the times in this book.

On a more troubling note, the centerpiece of this book is the Third Crusade. As loathsome and venial as the Crusades were, at least many of the knights involved were genuinely and deeply religious. Grant doesn't manage to convey this sense of devotion. Thus, there is no feeling of some great loss or fall at the disillusionment that follows when our young hero sees the events unfold. Instead, mostly he worries about his horse.

I did like the character of Kamil. He's a muslim boy whose entire family was killed by a knight. He starts out entirely bent on revenge, and it seems at the start that he is the 12th century analogue of a contemporary jihadist. But, unlike anyone else, Grant moves this boy through an interesting development and he is definitely the most interesting, and the most sympathetic, character in the book.

Finally, I have to wonder about the name of the book. The horse, named Hosanna, is red. But Kamil once notices how the red of his coat actually clashes with the color of blood. It's a good name, but it's also clearly inappropriate. ["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>...more

I found myself reading another John Green book, after The Fault in Our Stars, much sooner than I expected. In some ways, I think this is a better bookI found myself reading another John Green book, after The Fault in Our Stars, much sooner than I expected. In some ways, I think this is a better book than Fault. It's less manipulative, and relies less on simply being clever. And yet, while I could see ways that it was better, I enjoyed Fault a little more. I admit the possibility, however, that I might have enjoyed this one more if I had read it first.

Here's an example why that might be true: I fell in love with the narration in Fault on either page two or three when the narrator describes someone's history as "cancertastic". The love turned out to be infatuation, and it completely wore off when a character in this book describes something as being "nerdtastic." It turns out that in Fault he was cribbing from himself. But because I read that book first, I felt like he was cheating here and not there, if that makes any sense. Being a bit of a nerd myself, I just looked up a few online dictionaries for "-tastic" as a suffix, and sure enough, it now is one. But it was new to me, and I'm willing to bet that Green is among the first to slap it on either Cancer or Nerd. But I still felt cheated. And I think the reason why is because I was thinking of the people in these books as different people, but Green didn't try hard enough to make them talk differently. (Also, I'm willing to be chastised by any teens out there who will confirm that -tastic has actually become common usage among nerdy teens, or cancer ridden teens).

Another problem I had here was again Green proved to be overly literary. This book is haunted by the specters of Walt Whitman and Captain Ahab. At times, I felt like the narrative was devolving into a literary exegesis of Song of Myself. Not that there's anything wrong with that in principle. But it also felt way out of character for the narrator to puzzle through this poem with such obsession. In some ways, that poem is the ocean where the main character navigates his ship, in search of his own White Whale, in the form of Margo Speigleman.

I rather liked the narrative structure. It's a triptych. The first part follows the narrator and Margo on a night of adventure - 11 adventures to be precise. She drags him out in the middle of the night to assist her with getting some revenge on her ex-boyfriend and other ex-friends. This part was light and enjoyable.

Part two involves the disappearance of Margo, and the narrator's search for her, which takes him, mostly, into the afore-mentioned analysis of Song of Myself. This part worked decently, especially at the start, where it took the shape of an actual mystery. Eventually, the mystery became nothing but an exercise in self-pity, and I didn't like it so much. I did like the developments with the two "side-kicks": Ben and Radar. And the climax, during prom night was good (but a bit more subdued than Carrie, for example)

Part Three is an extended road trip that takes place instead of graduation. Put six kids into a minivan for twenty hours and what do you get? A whole lot of nothing here. In Fault, I thought the characters had way too much interesting to say to each other. Green goes to the opposite extreme here. Twenty hours together, and the most interesting thing any of them have to say is "I have to pee." It was good for a few laughs, but ultimately I thought this third part was both diverting and pointless.

All this was followed by a fairly touching coda, which redeemed some of the failings I saw earlier. I did like this book, but now I'm pretty sure that I won't lightly be picking up another Green book soon. ...more

Krazy Kat loves Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse can't stand Krazy. Officer Pup has an unrequited love for Krazy. To get rid of Krazy, Ignatz beans her withKrazy Kat loves Ignatz Mouse. Ignatz Mouse can't stand Krazy. Officer Pup has an unrequited love for Krazy. To get rid of Krazy, Ignatz beans her with a brick. Officer Pup arrests him and takes him to jail. Beaned, Krazy's brain only becomes more addled, and she's more deeply in love with Ignatz. She goes to the outside of jail and serenades Ignatz, which only enrages him further. As a comic strip or a cartoon, I love Krazy Kat. I even have a great framed original cell from one of the Krazy Kat cartoons, one of the nicest Christmas presents I've ever seen.

The Series of Unfortunate Events strikes me as being similar. The kids each have their one trait: inventor, reader, biter. They get placed with a hapless caretaker. Count Olaf insinuates himself and threatens much evil They try to get help from their clueless Uncle Poe, but end up on their own, and foil Olaf anyways. As a comic strip, or a cartoon, I might like this too. As a series of books, not so much, and I think I've had enough. That's ok, though. Jay Kantor wrote a full length, serious (sort of) novel based on Krazy Kat, given to me by another person aware of my fondness for KK, but I've never been able to get more than a few pages into it.

I do think that if I had a kid who enjoyed these books, they would make a fine and fun series to read aloud. But there's just not enough there to make me want to continue....more

I should have liked this book more than I did. The narrator is genial and I enjoyed the general tone of the narration. I like it when the narrator ofI should have liked this book more than I did. The narrator is genial and I enjoyed the general tone of the narration. I like it when the narrator of a book pulls down the fourth wall, and reveals himself as the teller of the tale, and I especially like it in children's books, which are often better read aloud, or sub-vocalized. That sort of reading benefits from the narrator having a voice and a personality.

The story was fine, if a bit anachronistic. The story feels like it should be one of the kind of mid-Victorian exposes on which Dickens made his career. The kids are orphaned at the beginning of the book, and basically all the adults they know, especially their family members, are angling to get control over their parents' fortune, and the kids be damned in the process.

I wasn't even that creeped out by Count Olaf trying to force himself to be wedded to the 14 year old heiress. The fact of it didn't bother me so much. What put me off a bit was the hyperbolic escalation of his evil. He goes from neglecting them, to forcing them to make dinner, to striking the 12 year old, to trying to force a marriage on the 14 year old Violet, to threatening murder of a toddler. All of this in a handful of pages.

What I did like is that the kids were not simply passive about the terrible things forced on them. Given their limited resources, they kept making plans and acting on them, trying to extricate themselves from the situation. However, the nature of their plans was not particularly clever, and its no surprise that none of them worked particularly well. It's not that the kids are all that stupid. Rather, I suspect that Snicket lacks the daring imagination to have the kids do stuff that was truly imaginative.

And the thing I'm not sure of yet is the names in the book. The kids are the Baudelaires, and their banker relative is Mr. Poe, who has a son named Edgar. At first, I liked the literary references, but they wore thin. If you make a joke with a name, you have to live with the joke for the rest of the series. Sometimes I like it (Hiro Protagonist), sometimes I don't (Mr. Slow as the lawyer in Trollopes The Mackenzies). Here, I'm on the fence, but I think 13 books with these names might push me off of it.

That's assuming I get to 13 books. I'll probably give the next one a try and see if things improve some. I liked this well enough, but if its the same thing again and again, I think I get the point....more

I've read several of these Newberry honored books now, and they make me wonder about the committee. The picture I get of the voters are of a bunch ofI've read several of these Newberry honored books now, and they make me wonder about the committee. The picture I get of the voters are of a bunch of middle aged white folk who think of books as a kind of castor oil. Not good tasting, but it's medicine and it's good for you whether you like it or not.

This one checks off all the boxes. The writing is graceful and beautiful, but stilted. There are a couple of events, but no story here. Story is something kids might like, so we can't have any of that. There are some pointless literary quirks that would be good to point out in a classroom setting, but are basically annoyances. Here, the main one is the lack of names for the characters. That would be OK, except the main character has younger brothers and sisters, and the writer lacks the skill to give any of the siblings a recognizable identity. And then there's the ever present nod to important, edifying issues: here it's the mistreatment of poor blacks in the deep south in the post Plessy v Ferguson era. (That's the 1899 case that said that separate but equal was OK, and was finally overruled by Brown v Board of Education in 1955.)

It's a miracle to me that The Graveyard Book won the Newberry award. I guess it means that the voters are not perfect in choosing books that will bore young readers and put them off of reading. But they are definitely close to perfect in that regard. And its true, much of the stuff that kids want to read on their own is drek. But there are also many good books out there that are also enjoyable, and if kids find good books that they like to read, who knows, maybe they would read more. But my guess is that that won't happen so long as everyone seems to agree that these Newberry books are what kids "should" be reading.

With apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who himself appears to have taken the phrase from Henry Miller, this book presents a Coney Island of the mindWith apologies to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who himself appears to have taken the phrase from Henry Miller, this book presents a Coney Island of the mind. The amusement park is also a kind of dreamscape, but the goal of the park is to trap and use souls for further development of its rides. The hero, Blake, has one night to get through seven nightmarish rides. If he dies along the way, he gets absorbed into the park for eternity. If he hasn't finished his quota before dawn, then he becomes a carney.

His rides are the carousel, bumper cars, a rocking boat, hall of mirrors, roller coaster, Wheel of Ra (centrifugal force ride), and Tilt-a-Whirl. Each ride has its own deadly twist. On the carousel for example, the animals are all college mascots. They come to life and try to either stampede or eat the riders. And the roller coaster is the Kamikaze, but on it, each car transforms to a Japanese Zero plane, and they are all on true kamikaze missions.

The most interesting part of the book is the park impresario, a woman named Cassandra. She knows the minds of all her patrons, and so each ride gets tailored to evoke maximum fear and thrill from each patron. The riders thus get sucked into the park by how entrancing it is. In part, it is their choice to get stuck, since the park is delivering something they think they want or need. This is exactly what happens to Blake's younger brother, whom Blake is trying to save.

Since the Park is it's own separate world, one created by Cassandra using the minds of her patrons, that makes Cassandra a kind of malevolent god. She's drawn to Blake because he presents a rare challenge for her. He's the only one who has ever gotten as far as five rides into the evening. At one point she offers to share her powers with him. If he accepts, he could make the park a better place, and have godlike powers himself. I liked this aspect of the book. It's very subversive, and it's a wonder to me that this book gets taught in schools, because it raises the traditional "problem of evil" in a way that might lead kids to think that "God" (with a capital G) isn't all that nice, and maybe not all that different from Cassandra.

For me, the most terrifying amusement park ride of all is the Cups and Saucers, the little ride for tykes where the cups gently spin around, and there's a wheel in the cup that you can turn to make the cup spin on its axis. Terrifying? You bet. And here's why. When I was in high school, my friends and I sometimes went drunk to a nearby park, and played chicken on this ride. We would get five people into a cup, and then spin the wheel until someone either called "Uncle" or until people started puking. Of course, calling "Uncle" was unthinkable. And with that kind of centrifugal force, puking is especially unpleasant because as it leaves it tends to come back at you. I think that's enough of a picture. Go to any amusement park, and I still get a queasy feeling walking past the kiddy section and those gentle Cups and Saucers.

So I was delighted when the last ride in this book was none other than the evil, loathsome Cups and Saucers. I wonder if Shusterman had high school buddies who were as perverse as mine?

My main reservation with this book is the rides were maybe too straightforward, and not dreamlike enough, and similarly, the ending and the lesson of the ending was a bit too clean and easy to digest. I would have preferred him to leave some of the craziness alone. I suppose that he ties things up as he does because the book is for kids. But then I think of Alice. For generations, kids have loved her adventures, and Carroll does absolutely nothing to try to make sense out of Wonderland. It simply is what it is. I would have liked this better, oddly enough, if Shusterman had left things hanging freely, and had not neatly tied everything together....more

The Batman TV series had an endemic problem. The pantheon of villains, of course, was the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, and the Penguin. But after a wThe Batman TV series had an endemic problem. The pantheon of villains, of course, was the Joker, the Riddler, Catwoman, and the Penguin. But after a while, it felt like they were either just recycling the same villains. And it didn't make too much difference whether the Riddler was Frank Gorshen or John Astin. Actually it did, Gorshen was way better. And I never could figure out why one of them got a single question mark on his tights, while the others was riddled with marks. Anyway, the producers could either keep breaking these idiots out of the state penitentiary, or they could create new, but more forgettable villains. And thus, we got the likes of Cliff Robertson as Shame, and Milton Berle as Louis the Lilac, and Carolyn Jones as Marsha Queen of Diamonds. (Question: Did the Riddler and Marsha ever play an episode together, and if they did, who took care of Pugsly and Wednesday?)

Ten books into Percy Jackson, and Riordan is facing much the same problem. His heroes either run into the same monsters again and again, or they run into new, and even less interesting, monsters. As the penultimate book in this series, I would have thought that this book would have really amped up the pace and the tension. Instead, it felt like Riordan was just spinning his wheels. Of course, Percy and Annabeth are going to make it through Tarturus and to the Doors of Death, so the only interesting thing is how they would do it. I finished the book a few hours ago, and already I'm forgetting how they did it. There were a couple of friendly monsters who helped them out and died for their efforts. And for the first time Percy wonders how things might look from the monster's standpoint.

Topside, Hazel and Leo both get some more interesting chapters. I enjoyed Leo's time with Calypso. I liked Hazel discovering how to manipulate the Mist. Frank, Jason, and Piper are all decidedly less interesting here. And the stuff with Nico simply felt out of place. Major spoiler coming: Riordan is being oh, so politically correct in endorsing Nico's gayness. But I notice he didn't give Nico anyone to hook up with. I guess the idea of his being gay is just fine, but lets not actually show any gayness.

Overall, this book was a letdown. I quite liked the first three in this series, and especially liked Annabeth in The Mark of Athena. This one veered more toward the dreadful Kane books, and it doesn't leave me longing for the next installment.

One side comment about the reviews of this book on Goodreads. If you want to see what people think of this book, the last place to look is at the Goodreads reviews. It is totally awash in teens giving five star reviews that are simply cumming with gifs, all written before the book was released. As with Billy Madison's speech, anyone who looks at the community reviews of this book will simply come away dumber for having done it....more

Charming, and nicely done, but quite slight. Max, a learning disabled giant, thinks of himself as doomed. That is until he befriends a physically disaCharming, and nicely done, but quite slight. Max, a learning disabled giant, thinks of himself as doomed. That is until he befriends a physically disabled genius who actually is doomed, but who saves Max. I liked the main characters, and liked Freak's mom, the Fair Gwen. The few other characters are more cut-outs than anything else. And to a certain extent, the story suffered from "and then" syndrome. The plot didn't flow so much as it lurched from one incident to the next. I haven't come to terms with this yet, because sometimes I think the looseness of a plot works quite well, and other times it annoys me, and I'm not exactly sure why in each case, but here I leaned more towards being annoyed.

Here's the basic reason why: we start off with some basic bullying. This creates a loose end which is only abruptly tied off at the very end, but otherwise has no true bearing on the tale. And then there is the ending. Of course it is inevitable, but at the same time its not really a part of the story. It comes in from somewhere else, or at least it feels that way. Anytime the writer wanted to, he could just wheel out this ending. It would have made as much sense on page 50 as it did where it came. And that troubles me. It's not quite a deus ex machina, but its close....more

This book purports to take place after the close of the fairy tale, but it doesn't. At the end of the fairy tale, at least the Grimm version, CinderelThis book purports to take place after the close of the fairy tale, but it doesn't. At the end of the fairy tale, at least the Grimm version, Cinderella gets married, and at the wedding a pair of birds pluck out the eyes of her stepsisters, leaving them blind. And don't forget that one of the had already chopped off her toes, and the other had chopped off a heel.

Here, the book takes up two weeks after the Prince has retrieved Ella. She's ensconced in the castle and in training for her upcoming wedding. Already, after two weeks, she's bored, restless, and growing skeptical about her future. Having left one type of prison, she's altogether shocked that her future promises to be yet another kind of prison.

One way to look at this is as an attempt to show a realistic portrayal of "happily ever after." But that raises the question of what type of realism we are looking at? The characters here are all either good or evil, just as in any fairy tale. And there isn't anyone who is particularly realistic. Take the Prince as the best example. In the fairy tale, his character is summed up by his name: he's Prince Charming and you really don't need to know anything more about him. Readers can supply their own details of what he's like from their own impressions of what is beautiful and good. Here, he's still beautiful, but he is alternatively, empty, base, and stupid. Of the three, stupidity is probably his main characteristic. But there's no depth or reality to him. Rather, royalty has gone from all that is good, to an archetype of all that is stupid and uncaring.

So we aren't getting a "realistic" version of a fairy tale here. Instead we are getting a fairy tale where some of the archetypes have been switched. And this version works very much like a Disney version of a fairy tale. It puts the moral first. It just has a different take on the moral instruction that is involved. In the original fairy tales, the tale came first, and its a testament to the strength of those tales that they are capable of so many reworkings, with so many slightly different morals, all arising from basically the same material.

The moral in this working is that Ella can find her "happily ever after" only if she takes charge of her own life. In her "real" version of the night of the ball, there is no fairy godmother. Rather, Ella acts on her own and changes her world. Later in the book, she does much the same thing, but with an even greater spirit of independence.

I might have liked this book better if the connections to the Fairy Tale were either more disguised or attenuated. Here, it sometimes felt too clever, and at other times it simply veered toward literary criticism. Overall, I quite liked it. But my favorite reworking of the Cinderella story is definitely Marion Fay, by Anthony Trollope. It's not otherwise relevant to this book, and its definitely not young adult, but if you like Cinderella, and you have any liking for Victorian fiction, you should definitely check that one out. ...more

I'm not sure why I'm putting this on the children's shelf. If I had discovered the book differently, I doubt it would have occurred to me that this isI'm not sure why I'm putting this on the children's shelf. If I had discovered the book differently, I doubt it would have occurred to me that this is a YA book.

The book is bleak, unrelenting, and beautifully written. In the first person, the narrator's language at times seems too lofty for his character, but it works. The narrator is a 19 year old fuck-up in Fresno, CA. He was smart enough to get into college, but dropped out. Earlier in life he was more interested in sniffing glue, inhaling spray paint, and hanging out on the fringe of very violent gangs. Now he's too old for any of that, but he doesn't have anything else to look forward to. Instead, he eeks out a living by spray painting house numbers on curbs, and doing odd jobs for people if he can persuade them to let him work for them. He lives in a squalid apartment, and is taking to thinking of the roaches as his "homies"

Violent death has surrounded him. His first cousin was stabbed, and everyone he knows seems to expect him to kill someone in revenge, though no-one knows who did the stabbing. That doesn't seem to matter all that much, so long as someone dies for it. There are a bunch of people who say they know who did it, but its pretty clear that none of them can be trusted, and even if they could be trusted, their knowledge is suspect.

The narrator tries to make things better for himself, but its one step forward and three steps back. He wants to get out of his world, but can't seem to find a way. And at the same time he's afraid to leave the only life he's known. Trapped, it seems like a violent end is the only way out for him.

And yes, in the midst of all this despair, there is some beautiful writing and some good characterization....more

I've sworn many times that I will no longer read series until they are finished, and yet I keep breaking my own rule. I'm fairly confident that ShusteI've sworn many times that I will no longer read series until they are finished, and yet I keep breaking my own rule. I'm fairly confident that Shusterman won't pull a GRR Martin or a Jordan with this series. But for some reason, I thought that this would be a trilogy.

The first two books in this series worked reasonably well as stand-alone works. Of course, I think Shusterman hadn't planned a sequel when he wrote Unwound, so its no surprise that that one worked on its own. The second one had a decent, coherent structure on its own as well. This one, not so much. Several of the plot threads are left hanging. And there's no big climactic event to bring the novel to close, as with either of the last two.

Rather, the characters get put into place for what is likely to be a fairly satisfying finish to this series. And I will definitely read it. I'm just a little miffed that I'll probably have to wait a couple of years. I enjoy these things so much more when I simply read them straight through.

On the plus side, there's one really good new character addition in this book. I found myself liking Grace a lot. She's supposed to be "low cortical," which is a type of mental handicap. But she's extremely good at strategy games. She sees things differently than most people, and Shusterman writes her very well. And Lev, as always, is a pleasure to follow. I also found myself more interested in Cam, the series Frankenstein monster.

I could do without the present tense narrative. I have a degree in Screenwriting, so I should probably be able to easily roll with this kind of writing. But I still find it jarring in a novel. And I haven't yet been able to bring myself to read a book written in the first person present. That's a voice that just grates on me from the outset, and I've never been able to stomach more than a few paragraphs of it....more

One of the things I like about Shusterman is that, once he grabs hold of an idea, he does everything he can to milk it. I loved that about the SkinjacOne of the things I like about Shusterman is that, once he grabs hold of an idea, he does everything he can to milk it. I loved that about the Skinjacker series, and he is doing the same thing here. The basic idea of this series is that "unwinding" is a new medical technology that allows doctors to harvest every part of a person for re-use. The first book started with the premise that parents could no longer abort their kids, but they could opt to unwind their problem teenagers. This creates a nice supply of organs to treat pretty much every ailment, but is not so great from the standpoint of the teens.

Stand the unwind idea on its head and you have Frankensteining (if I may coin a new word), or what Shusterman calls rewinding. Doctors also now have the ability to create a new person from a collection of parts. But does the new person have a "soul."? Thats one of the things that Shusterman starts to play with in this book. And since the next book is called Unsouled, I'm pretty confidant that it will dive deeper into this mess. While some people insist that the rewound boy has no soul, others are just as insistent that the soul of an unwound teen persists in the teen's "divided" state. When you get the arms of a guitar player, you get the muscle memory that comes with it, and perhaps you also inherit part of his soul?

Sacrifice is the other idea that Shusterman weaves throughout the book. Primitive cultures would use the idea of ritual human sacrifice to please the gods, and thus help the community by making it rain, or some such thing. In every war, young people are called upon to fight and possibly die for the greater good of their country, often against their will. Unwinding comes down to a variation on this idea. Teens are sacrificed for the greater good. Every unwound kid can save the lives of several and perhaps many other people. Thus, unwinding should be a blessing, right? How many saved live would it take to justify the death of one person?

Here, Shusterman's heroes are the teens who have escaped unwinding and are fighting against it. Each one of them has to face a situation where they must decide whether to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of other unwounds. So, while fighting against themselves being used for the benefit of others, they (or at least some of them) volunteer themselves up for the benefit of others. The cool thing is that Shusterman does this repeatedly, and it never feels like he's hitting you over the head with preachiness. It just naturally falls out as part of the storytelling. Conversely, what if someone wants to be unwound, to offer himself up for the benefit of others, but the proper consent isn't in place?

Finally, the first book didn't touch on this idea, but Shusterman starts playing with the idea of organlegging (as Larry Niven called it), or parts pirating in Shusterman's terminology. There are people who have made a practice of keeping up the supply of parts for transplant, by simply abducting kids and having them unwound. This helps keep the price of transplants down.

I really enjoyed this book, and just picked up a copy of Unsouled. I'm sold enough on Shusterman that I think I will keep reading his stuff, at least until I come across some stuff that's significantly below this level. He's just a very gifted story teller from what I have seen....more

It's a kid's caper book, and it has about all the substance that you would expect from a caper book. The characters in the gang are defined by their aIt's a kid's caper book, and it has about all the substance that you would expect from a caper book. The characters in the gang are defined by their abilities: there's the climber, the small space guy, the computer wiz, etc... And the "brains" behind the gang is "The Man With The Plan." The plans, of course, go terribly awry. But everything works out in the end.

I've read some reviews where people are concerned about the kind of role models and messages that this might send out to our kids. That's now what bothered me. I was hoping for something more clever and funny. The basic idea is fun. A girl's pet monkey is kidnapped. The kids discover the culprit is the owner of a floating, travelling zoo. No-one will help them get the monkey back, so they take matters into their own hands, but end up stealing all the animals in the zoo, instead of just getting back the monkey. Then they have to take care of the animals, hide them from their parents and the world, while trying to find them good permanent homes.

This could have been hilarious. Instead, it bordered on mildly amusing. But it was quick, and the writing was competent. It's definitely a kids book that's very much for kids. I can imagine some younger kids would like it. But really good kids books are accessible to kids but wonderful for all ages, and this definitely did not fill that bill....more

This type of book is a tough sell for an author. It tells the story of what happened to Lev from the time he left CyFi to sometime before he appearedThis type of book is a tough sell for an author. It tells the story of what happened to Lev from the time he left CyFi to sometime before he appeared in the Graveyard. As such, it fills a hole in the story arcs in Unwind. But was there a need to fill such a hole? If so, then the author is pretty much admitting that he blew it when writing Unwind. If not, then what's the point of having this story.

Ultimately, I suppose its just for fun. And I also suspect that he let this story be released because there was something of a clamor for more in this world before he released Unwholly. On top of that, it's not at all clear how much of this is from Shusterman and who much belongs to Ms. Knowlden.

The result: it was OK, but a bit unnecessary. The idea of the Indians (Slotmongers here) using animal parts to fill their need for spare parts for sugery is really cool, but probably even less believable than the idea of unwinding itself. The story itself was slight, and while it is supposed to, on the surface, explain how Lev became a clapper, I think it fails in that regard. But it does succeed in showing how Lev became a failed clapper.

Overall, this was even slighter than I had expected, but it had the blessing of being really short, and it had a few moments that made it worthwhile for me. It certainly didn't put me off of continuing with the series....more

When you have the chance, its always a good idea to link to Monty Python.

In Dangerous Visions, a great collection of short stories edited by Harlan Ellison, there's a story called The Jigsaw Man, by Larry Niven. It starts:

" In A.D. 1900, Karl Landsteiner classified human blood into four types: A, B, AB and O, according to incompatibilities. For the first time, it became possible to give a shock patient a transfusion with some hope that it wouldn't kill him.

" The movement to abolish the death penalty was barely getting started, and already it was doomed."

It's a great little story about a man in a jail cell with two organ-leggers. All three face the death penalty for their crimes: the organ-leggers for kidnapping and killing people to sell their organs; the protagonist for an unspecified, but much more minor offense. Because the demand for organs is so high, their conviction and execution is a foregone conclusion.

This book follows much the same premise. Technology has made it possible to harvest all the tissue from a living body, and to use it in transplants. As a result, parents have the choice to "unwind" their teenagers: to send them to harvesting centers where their lives will continue in a divided state, becoming useful to society as spare parts for other, more worthy people. In this world, abortion has been outlawed, but to keep up the supply of unwanted teens, the law has also been changed so that anyone who finds an unwanted baby has legal responsibility for the child. Thus people often are forced to raise "storked" kids: ones that the mother has dumped on their doorstep.

Most of the criticisms I've read of this book focus on the implausibility of the premise. Unwinding was a compromise to end the Heartland War. It was suggested as a joke to appease both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. Pro-lifers should be happy because the unwound kid stays alive (albeit as replacement parts). Pro-choice people still get to choose, but the choice is delayed until adolescence, arguably when the mom can make a more informed decision. Looked at from this standpoint, the premise is entirely unbelievable.

But add in the possibility of basically ensuring immortality for people, so long as their is an ample supply of new tissue to transplant once something goes wrong with the old tissue. Under this scenario, the premise is still far fetched, but people will go a long way to find justifications for horrible things that serve their self-interest. I think it's very easy to buy into Niven's scenario, where the death penalty is available even for minor crimes, because it keeps up the supply of life-sustaining organs. I also think, if it were allowed, some people would sell aborted fetuses to scientists for their stem cells. So, to my way of thinking, the first premise of the book is just a large extrapolation. Societies change in attitude happened to quickly, but I don't see a whole lot wrong with the basic premise.

As for the idea of "storking," it sounds absurd that someone would be legally responsible for a baby just because it got dumped on the person's doorstep. Right? Here's how animal control laws work in my town. Suppose you find a stray dog, and you don't want it. You take it into your house to see if you can locate the owner, but its been abandoned. So no luck. You call animal control and ask them to pick up the stray. They will tell you that they won't pick up the dog because it is now under your protection, and thus not a stray. If you ask what would happen if you let the dog go and call them back, the answer is that they will pick up the dog and have you arrested for animal cruelty. Once you take in the stray, you are legally responsible either to care for it, or to find it another home. If you abandon it, you are guilty of animal cruelty. That's the same as the "storking" law here, and while I think its absurd, its obviously not far-fetched.

Onto the book itself: the plot is tight and clever. The characters are not as good, on the whole, as the ensemble of characters in the Everlost series, but Lev is a really good, fully realized character. And the others are more fully developed than in your typical YA book. At one point, it looked like this book might devolve into yet another YA tract on bullying, but Shusterman righted the ship pretty quickly, and the ending is terrific (both in the modern sense, and in the ancient sense deriving from "terror").

I will definitely be getting the other books in the series. In fact, I've already loaded Unstrung onto my kindle, only to find out afterward that its not really written by Shusterman. But it focuses almost entirely on Lev, so I'm still a bit optimistic. Good stuff.

It oozes charm. In the first half of the book, Schmidt really had me. I absolutely loved everything surrounding the incident with the creampuffs and iIt oozes charm. In the first half of the book, Schmidt really had me. I absolutely loved everything surrounding the incident with the creampuffs and its aftermath. While the charm remained, the second half lacked a bit of direction. It didn't quite stall, but the plot is a very slender reed here. And outside of Holling and Mrs. Baker, the characters are all pretty thin.

There's also a fairly horrifying aspect here. During this book, Holling does the following: Appears as Ariel in a local performance of The Tempest; gets brushed by a school bus while saving his sister and landing in the hospital, gets opening day tickets to see the Yankees, goes to Port Authority again to rescue his prodigal sister, runs and wins a varsity cross country match. His parents are not there for any of these things. For his performance in the play, they are too busy watching the Bing Crosby Christmas Special. When he lands in the hospital, they couldn't be bothered. For opening day, his father promises to take him, in spite of already having two prior engagements which he knows he will keep. The father is an incredible asshole, more distant than any Dad I knew of while growing up. And the mom is almost a cypher. With parents like these, its basically a miracle that Holling and his sister grow up with any sense at all. This leaves me wondering: is this how many Boomers think of themselves? As having turned out well in spite of the neglect of their parents?

An additional charm of this book for me is that I grew up in the next town over from Hicksville, where this takes place. He never mentions Hicksville in the book, but its where Schmidt is from. Also, I was one of the kids who left our school for religious instruction (on Fridays instead of Wednesdays). That lasted until I got kicked out for arguing with the nuns. Schmidt does such a great job of capturing the spirit of growing up in sheltered Long Island in the sixties. It almost makes me think that most of the book would be lost on its targeted audience. That said, early teenagers recommended this one to me, so it must play pretty well to at least some of the YAs (at least those who don't spend all of their time re-reading yet again the same couple of series)....more

Instead of Tom Ward, Grimalkin narrates this installment. She is the witch assassin of the Malkin clan, and her name is no accident: Grim Malkin. LikeInstead of Tom Ward, Grimalkin narrates this installment. She is the witch assassin of the Malkin clan, and her name is no accident: Grim Malkin. Like her, the book is rather single minded and relentless.

My sister puts post-its of simple affirmations around herself. The idea is to bring up positive images that will help mold herself into the person she wants to be. Grimalkin seems to have done much the same, and through the power of positive thinking, she formed herself into the most brutal and ruthless of all witch assassins. She succeeds through the power of her own expectations, and through the sheer force of her will and determination.

Of course, with my sister, the underside of these affirmations is that she really is not like the things she wants herself to be. So, while they are supposed to help shape her, they also cannot help but be a pointer to her own limitations. Some of this comes through with Grimalkin as well. There are several times that the chinks in her armor become exposed. But, when this happens, when she catches herself she will deny them with an "I am Grimalkin." As if that was enough to explain it all away.

In the other books, I loved her character. Here, not quite so much. I was more taken by her own apprentice, Thorne. Traditionally, the Malkin witch-assassin earns her place by killing off the sitting assassin. That makes for an odd apprenticeship.

This was also the first book without either Tom or the Spook. At this point, Alice is the only character who appears in every book, which sort of confirms my suspicion that she is actually the centerpiece of the series, even if it does purport to be about Tom.

This book was a step down for me from the earlier books. It's an interesting departure from what the series has been. And it has some really good moments. But Grimalkin's self-confidence (even if it is sometimes false) got to be a bit off-putting for me. She's a great character still, but I prefer her as an enigmatic supporting character. If Delaney decides again to shift his first person narrator, I'd prefer to hear from Alice, or maybe the Spook....more

I've read the Skinjacker series, and the beginning of the Skinjacker series. In those, Shusterman is very strong on content and plotting, and he drawsI've read the Skinjacker series, and the beginning of the Skinjacker series. In those, Shusterman is very strong on content and plotting, and he draws very clever consequences from his initial strong premises. They are, first and foremost, stories that involve big ideas, and they take place on a very big stage. By contrast, the narrative voice in those books is fine, but not particularly special. So I would have guessed that that was what Shusterman does. And his domain name of "storyman.com" bolstered my idea of his strengths.

So imagine my pleasant surprise here. Schwa is a book that stands largely on the funny and charming voice of its narrator, Antsy. There is a hook idea here: that the Schwa is a kid so unobtrusive that he has basically become unnoticeable to four out of five people. But the book depends much more on throwing a bunch of oddball characters, and having them mix together. And on the plus side, its not just the kids who are fun and interesting. Maybe the best character in the book is the restaurant owning hermit, who is the stuff of neighborhood legend, and keeps 14 Afghan hounds in his apartment, each of them named after a vice or virtue. There are also wonderful, and clever details, like the Schwa keeping a paper clip collection: a paper clip from the Titanic, one from Michael Jordan's first contract, etc... (The unnoticeable kid collects the unnoticeable details.)

Unfortunately, with all the charm, and the wonderful mix of characters, the story veered at the end in a way that I didn't think was particularly satisfying. It wasn't bad, but I was enjoying myself so much, and I've liked Shusterman's plots elsewhere so much, that I was expecting more. But even so, I found this a thoroughly entertaining and sweet book....more

I felt sort of like an idiot when it hit me that this book actually is the high-school retelling of Shane, the western by George Stevens. I mean ShaynI felt sort of like an idiot when it hit me that this book actually is the high-school retelling of Shane, the western by George Stevens. I mean Shayne Blank is the name of the mysterious stranger who rides into school on his BMW motorcycle. He's not particularly special in any way, but has a distinct air of danger about him. He gets mixed up with some really bad characters while trying to help some kid who is out of his depth, and he becomes tangentially involved with everyone in the kid's family. Things escalate through a series of cool showdowns, until there is a climax, and he rides off into the sunset.

In cases like this, where the lifting is so obvious, I don't know whether to be put off by what the author has done, or charmed. In this case, I'm going to opt for a little of both. If you accept the implausibility of an itinerant vigilante student, the basic of idea of this western translates remarkably well into the high school milieu. The tale is still slight, but it works, and it's engaging. But I was also a little put off the way Hautman tried to hide what he was doing. The book opens with another cliche: flashbacks as a story is being told in a police interrogation. In this way, Hautman tries to hide the Western cliches behind some Hard Boiled Detective/Film Noir cliches.

Also, this being the third book I've read of his, I'm starting to lose patience with some recurrences: the alcoholic father, the dysfunctional family, and the use of an overly involved narrative structure, usually a very clever structure, to patch over some weaknesses in the narrative itself. I'm more and more thinking that Hautman is extremely clever, but lacks some heart....more

This one goes straight to the top of my pantheon of movies that are better than the books they are based upon. More so than The Godfather, Jaws, evenThis one goes straight to the top of my pantheon of movies that are better than the books they are based upon. More so than The Godfather, Jaws, even The Graduate and Dr. Strangelove. First, the movie created some drama, where the book simply plods along from one episode to another. This comes from introducing the Wicked Witch of the West very early on, and making her the central antagonist. I was shocked that in the book she is hardly even a major player - just someone else that gets destroyed in Dorothy's rampage of slaughter.

Then there is the frame device in the movie that is simply absent from the book. There's a suggestion that Kansas is grey and Oz is colorful. But there's no introduction of the main players as Kansas characters, and there's nothing to wrap things up as a dream sequence. The book is OK as it is, but the framing in the movie is wonderful. I've only seen it once in the theatre, and I was already an adult when I did. Even so, the shift from black and white to Technicolor is absolutely stunning and brilliant. I can only imagine how it struck people back in the thirties, when this was probably the first color movie they had ever seen. And Technicolor blows away any color process that has come since. It's just way to expensive and technically demanding to make it practical. Otherwise, color movies would be much more impressive.

And then there's the language. The movie is full of inspired silliness: "We hear he is a wiz of a wiz if ever a wiz there was!" I thought at least that sort of thing would come from the book. But no. For the most part, the language is simply flat - more Kansas than Oz. If it weren't for the movie, I probably would have liked the book a little better. But let's face it, if it weren't for the movie, I never would have read the book at all. (And I somehow managed to avoid it for over 50 years, at that.)...more

Asked why he wanted to climb Everest in 1023, George Mallory quipped "Because it's there." The mountain killed him soon thereafter. He was last spotteAsked why he wanted to climb Everest in 1023, George Mallory quipped "Because it's there." The mountain killed him soon thereafter. He was last spotted 800 feet from the summit, and disappeared after that. Seventy five years later they found his body, and from the examinations that were done on it, it sounds like it was mostly intact, basically frozen for eternity or until discovered. There's still some debate over whether Mallory got to the summit, and if he did, whether that counts as the first "ascent" of Everest, or whether the laurels should still go to Sir Edmund Hillary.

Since then, an additional 216 people have died trying to climb Everest. If you like stats, that's 4.6 deaths for every 100 successful attempts at the summit. Of those, over a quarter of the people who died actually reached the summit, and then died on the way down.

Peak is about a 14 year old whose father wants him to climb to the summit. His father runs a commercial climbing company, and it would be a big boon to business to lead the youngest climber to ever reach the summit. Peak, however, does not have many of his own reasons. He can't even say that he's climbing it "because it's there."

At the start of the book, Peak is both a climber and a graffiti artist. He illegally climbs skyscrapers in Manhattan to tag them with his mark. During the book, he is simultaneously climbing Everest and keeping a journal about it (the book we get to read). So which is he? A climber, or a graffiti artist/ournal keeper. In a strange way, that's what this book is about. Peak is in search of motivation, and on Everest he finds it.

And that would be a great story, except that I didn't buy the ending of the book at all. At first, it looked like this book would be a bonding story between Peak and his estranged father. But Smith thankfully avoids that aspect, at least for the most part, and that relationship never becomes cloying. But the book ends up with Peak making an arbitrary choice and decision, and the more I think about what happens, the more arbitrary and unconvincing it seems to me. (view spoiler)[He's ten feet from the summit and decides to turn back on his own. Lots of people die on the descent, and I don't think that Peak could handle it on his own at that point. So the safer course would be to go over the top with the companions. And doing that would not hurt anyone at all. So he took a dangerous chance, gaining nothing for himself or anyone else, and all for the satisfaction of giving the finger to mountaineering, and saying that his twin sisters are more important. But he is able to put off his twin sisters for his writing at the end. So he's not really doing anything for them either. I just don't buy it, and in this case it hurts my overall opinion of the book. (hide spoiler)]

The book did a wonderful job of detailing the pain and boredom of acclimating to extreme high altitude. It dod a less good job of conveying the wonder of climbing. Instead, it stressed the concentrated focus of doing things one step at a time and repeating the process. Between the pain, the boredom, the repetition, the illness, and the dead bodies littering the trail, it convincingly makes one wonder why anyone would want to climb Everest at all. And if it had had a more satisfying conclusion (and there's part of me that doubts the reliability of the narrative at the end), I would have liked it much better.

Oh, and if you think the idea of a 14 year old kid climbing Everest is a preposterous premise, the current record for youngest to reach the summit is 13 years old, set in 2010, three years after the publication of Peak. There are also records for first blind person, first amputee, etc... ["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>...more

The final moral of this book is that it's OK to start again. I guess Goodreads was trying to drive that home, because I lost the review I was writingThe final moral of this book is that it's OK to start again. I guess Goodreads was trying to drive that home, because I lost the review I was writing even though I had almost finished it.

I thought this was a modest, well-written story. I sometimes felt like the author was talking down to the reader, and that some things were included because they would be instructional or good for discussion, and this detracted a bit from my enjoyment. I also thought there were lots of possibilities presented during the book, but that the author uniformly shied away from delving these possibilities. So I was left wanting more. I didn't necessarily want the story to go on longer, but I wanted the events to be deeper than what was presented.

The basic story is simple: Esperanza is a spoiled rich girl from Mexico, about 10 years after the revolution. Bandits kill her father, and her uncles then burn the family out of their ranch to take over the land. Esperanza , her mother, and a few servants escape to a farm work camp near Bakersfield, and undergo some hardship there. Their grandmother was left back in Mexico, and Esperanza's one great goal is to re-unite the family.

Along the way, there is a labor strike, a dust storm, some discrimination, and the forced re-patriation of Mexicans (including American citizens of Mexican descent). These events don't touch at Esperanza's core, and they don't move the book along in any big direction. They rather present the possibilities that are suggested, and then shrugged off.

The characters are good, but that's the trouble, they are too good. The women here are all strong, loyal, persevering, noble and true. At one point, it looks like there is an antagonist in Marta, who is an agitator for the workers. But she eventually is revealed to be just as strong, loyal, etc... as the others. By contrast, with one exception, the few men in the book are either cyphers or evil. The book wasn't long enough for me to find the characterizations tiresome, but it thankfully ended at just about the tipping point.

As for Esperanza: at the start she has just turned 13. She acts and sounds more like she's about seven or eight. She starts out conservative, unpractical, clinging, without empathy or consideration for others, and with absolutely zero competence. Given how practical, caring, and considerate her mother is, I found these faults, and the extent of them, to be surprising and unbelievable. Again, I think this is an aspect where the "writing for kids" factor comes in. It's as if Ryan shies away from making a subtle transformation because she is afraid that her audience won't get it.

When they get to the camp, Esperanza has one job: to sweep a platform where people socialize. Even though she's 13 years old, she is unable to figure out on her own how to work a broom. She's seen people sweep before, but she can't put together for herself how to go about it. Given this extraordinary, unfathomable level of incompetence, you can truly see how, by the end of the book, it has been a good thing for her to be trampled upon, and to end up the wine made from these Grapes of Wrath. ...more